I agree. I'm not sure how ReadyBoost works, but I suspect that it keeps a copy of the ReadyBoost file on the system drive, since pulling the flash drive out of the computer doesn't crash Windows. (Read operations would still be faster, though, since it would
just read from the flash memory.) If that is how ReadyBoost works, then setting a hard drive as a ReadyBoost drive would be like maintaining identical copies of the same page file.

So rather than use a page file on a hard disk that's accessed through a fast IDE/SATA connection, you'd prefer to use a page file on a hard disk that's accessed through a slower USB2 connection? That's an interesting approach to increasing performance.

The whole point of readyboost is that it uses flash-based memory. External hard disks don't use flash-based memory. That's why they're not supported.

﻿I agree. I'm not sure how ReadyBoost works, but I suspect that it keeps a copy of the ReadyBoost file on the system drive, since pulling the flash drive out of the computer doesn't crash Windows. (Read operations would still be faster, though, since
it would just read from the flash memory.) If that is how ReadyBoost works, then setting a hard drive as a ReadyBoost drive would be like maintaining identical copies of the same page file.

Pretty much, yes. It writes your pagefile to your harddisk -and- to your USB device. If the USB device is still plugged in, it will read from the (faster) USB device, otherwise it'll just read from the harddisk, like in earlier versions of windows. Using a
harddrive as a readyboost drive makes absolutely no sense whatsoever, since you wouldn't be getting the increased reading speed you get from a flash-based device.

So.... use an unsupported FLASH memory device like I did. I had a few that were useless for ReadyBoost but this got them working.

Plus, I'd like to know if I can use more than the 4gb restriction by changing some of the other registry entries at this path. Even though MS developers say that performance is only noticeable on Vista machines w/ around 1gb memory... still cool to know. Regardless, it may save my laptop battery a bit.

So don't hate, participate.

Also, still trying to figure out if it's a performance gain if I'm not using a ReadyBoost device that meets their IO bandwidth requirements:

The capacity of the removable media must be at least 256 MB (250 after formatting)

Devices larger than 4 GB will have only 4 GB used for ReadyBoost

The device should have an access time of 1ms or less

The device must be capable of 2.5 MB/s read speeds for 4 KB random reads spread uniformly across the entire device and 1.75 MB/s write speeds for 512 KB random writes spread uniformly across the device

You people need to learn how to not assume the worst in things, what pessimism! Why comment about it when you have no idea what it is?! I have enabled readyboost on my
secondary hard drive and what do you know windows goes from 7 seconds complete loading time to 5. Don't tell me that using a secondary hard drive makes no sense. It makes perfect sense when my hard drive has a seek time of 0.04ms and has write speeds of 150MB
per second. I am using a 4GB ram drive by Gigabyte. 1GB is dedicated to page file. Don't speak of what you don't know.

You people need to learn how to not assume the worst in things, what pessimism! Why comment about it when you have no idea what it is?! I have enabled readyboost on my secondary hard drive and what do you know windows goes from 7 seconds complete loading time
to 5. Don't tell me that using a secondary hard drive makes no sense. It makes perfect sense when my hard drive has a seek time of 0.04ms and has write speeds of 150MB per second. I am using a 4GB ram drive by Gigabyte. 1GB is dedicated to page file. Don't
speak of what you don't know.

That's idiotic. Windows puts those restrictions in place for a reason. If the drive doesn't meet the requirements, it WILL make your machine slower. You want to use something that
exceeds those requirements as much as possible.

I have two HDDs in my desktop computer. Is there a way to ReadyBoost enable my second HDD (which I use for storage and backup purposes as of now)? Having 2 HDDs parallel should be as boosting as having 2 cores?

I have two HDDs in my desktop computer. Is there a way to ReadyBoost enable my second HDD (which I use for storage and backup purposes as of now)? Having 2 HDDs parallel should be as boosting as having 2 cores?

I have two HDDs in my desktop computer. Is there a way to ReadyBoost enable my second HDD (which I use for storage and backup purposes as of now)? Having 2 HDDs parallel should be as boosting as having 2 cores?

Are they the same size? Might want to consider RAID 0, unless reliability is a big factor

it says i need atleast 235 MB of free space on the disc... blah,blah,blah. The funny thing is that my hard drive has 210Gb free space... I dont know why it cant find a measily 235Mb but you know how Windows is. Any idea's? I have a Maxtor 4 Mini External
Hard Drive.

It all depends on the drives format. i.e. the readyboost system only works on ntfs, fat16 and fat32 (unless you have windows 7 then you may use exFAT). Depending on the storage devices format is whether or not you may use more than 4GB of it, because readyboost
is saved as a file on the drive the format has everything to do with the optimized memory usage. FAT16 and FAT32 have a maximum file size of about 4GB, and with alot of the drives these days (especially flash and ext.HDs) are formatted FAT32 you're limited.
If you can re-format the drive to ntfs (or exFAT if you have win 7) you do not have that file size limitation. As for how it works better. Your paging serves as a pre-boot system (like us PC oldtimers "boot-disks") the pages it saves for "pre-booting are
just that saved, and leaves your RAM for more actual new process demands. The system starts to become overfilled with those "saved pre-boots", then proceeds to overwrite the old ones causing page failures. Readyboot works as almost extra RAM as opposed to
recognizing previous actions (like the pagefile sys does). Yes, pagefile works but, if you unbalance the memory usage it backfires and causes your PC to slow. Readyboost alows you to index in a way that alows for larger memory usable requests can be handled,
rather than pagefile sys. that handles small memory page requests. If you can manage using both properly and efficiantlly (don't put $100. into hard drives when if you have an open port can put more RAM into your PC) it's effective, but don't waste effort
or money on it.

Oh and don't allow your paging to take up too much memory, virtual memory does interfere with your used memory.